$5 Raspberry Pi Zero Pirate Radio Throwies

Editor’s note: The Raspberry Pi’s broadcast frequency can range between 1Mhz and 250Mhz, which may interfere with government bands. We advise that you limit your transmissions to the standard FM band of 87.5MHz–108.0MHz (see Step 5) and always choose a frequency that’s not already in use, to avoid interference with licensed broadcasters.

Illustration by Jacob Thomas

What better way to celebrate the launch of the tiny, $5 Raspberry Pi Zero than to build a project. The Raspberry Pi Pirate Radio is one of our favorite builds here at Make:, so it was an obvious pick to port to the new board. In case you missed our first crack at Pirate Radio, try it building it while you wait for your Pi Zero to arrive. PiFM was originally written by Oliver Mattos and Oskar Weigl, and revised by Ryan Grassel.

Pirate Radio is an extremely simple build: Cut and solder one wire to the Pi. The software installation and configuration doesn’t take too long either. Here is how we shrunk down the Pirate Radio into into a Pirate Radio throwie.

TIP: For a cleaner FM signal, and to reduce any accidental broadcasts outside the FM band, build a simple bandpass filter for your Pirate Radio using just a few components

Step #3: Boot the Pi Zero

Now that the microSD card is burned, remove the card from your laptop and insert it into your Raspberry Pi Zero.

Connect the USB OTG cable to the micro USB port labeled USB on the Pi. Then connect the female end of the OTG cable to a USB hub. This will give you enough USB ports to attach a Wi-Fi dongle, keyboard, and mouse. Attach all of those peripherals now.

Attach the mini-HDMI cable to the HDMI port on the Pi and the other end of the cable in your monitor.

NOTE: Why buy a USB OTG cable when you can make one. Check out our step-by-step guide.

TIP: Wi-Fi cards on the Pi can be easily setup using the graphical user interface. Look for the network logo on your desktop and enter in your SSID and password.

Step #6: Test the FM output

Grab a radio and tune your dial to 88.3 to listen to the audio output of your Pi Zero.

TIP: For a cleaner FM signal, and to reduce any accidental broadcasts outside the FM band, build a simple bandpass filter for your Pirate Radio using just a few components, at makezine.com/go/pirate-bandpass.